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Ubisoft joins Blender Development Fund to support open-source animation

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Re: Ubisoft joins Blender Development Fund to support open-source animation

#31

Post by pixelbath »

pasabagi wrote: post #28
pixelbath wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not dumbed down at all. If you can get over the fact that a bunch of stuff has moved into icons and that a few keybindings have changed, it's still very much the same.

I think more than a few keybindings have changed. My muscle-memory is basically useless. I'm also not really sure about the whole icon thing - I doubt I'll be using them. Still, I'm quite happy to see the changes - despite using old blender enough that I have the muscle memory, I still had to look keyboard shortcuts up all the time, which is in my eyes a sign of bad design.

Maybe you use Blender differently than I do, but all modeling shortcut keys are still mostly the same and work the same way they used to. I don't use the left-side icons either (I'm not really used to that in a Blender workflow), but aside from using F3 to search for commands instead of space bar, I've been using the same modeling shortcuts from 2.79. Left click took about a week to get used to, but the only problem I've had with 2.8 so far is figuring out how the Eevee engine works.

Re: Ubisoft joins Blender Development Fund to support open-source animation

#32

Post by chriswwweb »

BeefySwain wrote: post #23

"Not only will Ubisoft help funding online support for Blender developers, Ubisoft Animation Studio – a department of Ubisoft Film and Television – will also use Blender for their productions and assign developers to contribute to Blender’s open source projects." This seams like a really big deal. It's one thing to try to create a desert of profitability around yourself, which a lot of huge companies giving money to…

Yes it's a big deal, developers that submit code is probably worth more than the membership which is (only) €30K/year (if my research is correct: https://fund.blender.org/corporate-memberships/), so those 30k will allow them to hire a dev halftime, as blender fund says that 30k are equivalent to "half year developer time".

Well it depends how much those developers will actually contribute, but it's still very good news.

But on the other hand they just got 1.2 million from Epic Games for 3 years ... to me this seems to be a much bigger contribution: https://www.blender.org/press/epic-games-supports-blender-fo...?

Re: Ubisoft joins Blender Development Fund to support open-source animation

#33

Post by Ralfp »

bluedino wrote: post #13
kragniz wrote: post #3

Link seems to have broken, see also https://www.blender.org/press/ubisoft-joins-blender-developm...

While this is 'good' for the users of the software, isn't it 'bad' for the software industry? Community funded projects will never match the salaries that companies like AutoDesk pay their developers.

Ton Roosendaal (Blender creator) estimated in 2018 interview that 3D software market is very small, and pulled up Autodesk's (3DsMax/Maya, etc) business results from that time, which amounted to 25000 - 30000 yearly licenses. He also claimed that Maya has "maybe 20" developers behind with things being similar for other products.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJEWOTZnFeg (jump to 1h mark)

Re: Ubisoft joins Blender Development Fund to support open-source animation

#34

Post by Bekwnn »

dgellow wrote: post #20

Wow, that's so great. This announcement, the one from Epic Games, and the release of v2.8. So many great news for Blender! That makes me really motivated to try out to create a project using it.

I feel like 2.8 preview is what made companies step forward to support it. It was a big step in making blender a more attractive alternative.

Re: Ubisoft joins Blender Development Fund to support open-source animation

#35

Post by honestoHeminway »

pasabagi wrote: post #28
pixelbath wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not dumbed down at all. If you can get over the fact that a bunch of stuff has moved into icons and that a few keybindings have changed, it's still very much the same.

I think more than a few keybindings have changed. My muscle-memory is basically useless. I'm also not really sure about the whole icon thing - I doubt I'll be using them. Still, I'm quite happy to see the changes - despite using old blender enough that I have the muscle memory, I still had to look keyboard shortcuts up all the time, which is in my eyes a sign of bad design.

Thats how all those max and maya users felt, when you yelled how easy blender is.

Re: Ubisoft joins Blender Development Fund to support open-source animation

#36

Post by gmueckl »

Kudos to blender's marketing team. They get a bit of free money from this. But the true motive for Epic and Unisoft is likely an attempt to strong-arm Autodesk into providing better support and maintainance. Dissatisfaction with Autodesk lack of care for their DCC tools has been growing for a very long time now, but studios also have a huge investment into these tools as parts of their proprietary pipelines. Expect Autodesk to kowtow soon and make sure that none of these companies will make the switch. If it means that Autodesk actually delivers bugfixes for the version the customer has instead of one or two releases down the road, it is a good outcome for the studios.

Re: Ubisoft joins Blender Development Fund to support open-source animation

#37

Post by davnicwil »

jsgo wrote: post #4

Maybe this new UI change to Blender means it is high time I learn how to use it. Tried it before but couldn't get past left click not doing what I expect left clicking to do, but apparently things are more user friendly now. The influx of money/talent from Epic and Ubisoft is great though. Blender was, from what I've seen from the outside, looked on affectionately as being a good tool, but maybe this leads to them be…

Do you know of any good resources for learning Blender?

Re: Ubisoft joins Blender Development Fund to support open-source animation

#38

Post by nudiustertian »

slezyr wrote: post #10
jsgo wrote: post #4

Maybe this new UI change to Blender means it is high time I learn how to use it. Tried it before but couldn't get past left click not doing what I expect left clicking to do, but apparently things are more user friendly now. The influx of money/talent from Epic and Ubisoft is great though. Blender was, from what I've seen from the outside, looked on affectionately as being a good tool, but maybe this leads to them be…

> Tried it before but couldn't get past left click not doing what I expect left clicking to do, but apparently things are more user friendly now. Do not expect to master it by just clicking around. It's more like CAD you can do nothing without book/tutorials.

Fusion 360 really solved that problem with CAD, most of the features I was able to learn strictly by discovery

Re: Ubisoft joins Blender Development Fund to support open-source animation

#39

Post by WorldMaker »

babuskov wrote: post #29
chronogram wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love those drawn looking animation videos for games like The Burdens of Shaohao https://g.co/kgs/419Tq1 but are there any video game examples where those tools would be beneficial? My video game knowledge is not wide enough. Blender I can definitely see.

Any 2D game basically, and some assets for 3D games as well. For examples of 2D games with great graphics, take a look at: Mark of The Ninja, Hollow Knight, Limbo, Stardew Valley, Rayman Legends.

The amount of hand-drawn animation that went into Cuphead is a marvel.

There a bunch of really interesting examples just using Ubisoft's UbiArt framework such as Rayman Legends, Child of Light, and Valiant Hearts.

Speaking of Ubisoft and open source, Ubisoft originally announced UbiArt as an engine/framework intended to be open sourced. It's a shame that Ubisoft never followed up on that promise.

Supposedly it hasn't been used for a game since 2015 because it was "hard to use", but that seems more of a reason to open source it, perhaps to see if community interest could help where internal-only work struggled. A lot of open source starts hard to use and takes a village to make it better. (Blender, also mentioned here, might just be a poster child of that, too.)

Re: Ubisoft joins Blender Development Fund to support open-source animation

#40

Post by shmerl »

noobermin wrote: post #22

I'll go ahead and say the quiet part loud, if Blender can create a low cost alternative to Maya and the rest especially for entry and beginning level modelers and animators, this is a great thing.

It already did. More to the point, if Blender can create an easy to use and fully functional alternative to closed tools, it would be even better.
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